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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23542927">Talk/Listen/Know</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/okemmelie/pseuds/okemmelie'>okemmelie</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Fluff, Threats of Violence, against sam, idk what fluff is tbh, probably???, which is what he deserves</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 15:55:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>879</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23542927</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/okemmelie/pseuds/okemmelie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Ted listens when Charlotte talks about things she wants to be different in her life. Sometimes Charlotte doesn't listen when Ted tells her Sam's an asshole or when he tells her she deserves better. Sometimes Ted looks at Charlotte in rare moments of happiness and knows he'd rather waste his time chasing after her than doing literally anything else.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Charlotte/Ted (The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Talk/Listen/Know</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>both gwen and an anon requested charted + "you know i’ll kill him if he hurts you" from this list of prompts, so uhh, legally i had to write that: https://helenmcwife.tumblr.com/post/614580508207218688/prompts-for-writing</p><p>anyway, i love,,,, Them</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Ted doesn’t consider himself a listener. He’s a talker, sure, and boy does he love to talk, but listening has always been an issue. Not his issue: It’s just that no one has anything interesting to say.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then he meets Charlotte and it becomes less true.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What it is about her, he’s not quite sure, but there’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>something </span>
  </em>
  <span>and Ted doesn’t know how to stop listening. She’ll say the smallest things and he’ll catch onto them without even realizing and they’ll stick around without him even trying.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That’s how they end up in his bed, not hooking up but rather just laying there and looking up into the ceiling where Ted has half-heartedly hung up fairy lights. Well, he’s hung them up whole-heartedly, it’s just that he’s not really good with stuff like that so it looks half-hearted, but it’s for Charlotte so it can’t be anything but whole-hearted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A couple of weeks ago, she mentioned that she really liked fairy lights, but that Sam would never let her hang them in their house because he thinks they’re both childish and ugly. So of course Ted bought fairy lights. And of course he hung them up. And of course Charlotte noticed before they got undressed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tells himself that he minds her getting sentimental, that he’s sad they’re not going to fuck right away, but then she looks at him with this big smile on her lips and says thank you and almost starts fucking crying (he can see tears forming in her eyes and it’s the most heartbreaking thing he’s seen).</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You remembered.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course I remembered.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Charlotte tells him that it’s not an ‘of course’. Sam wouldn’t have remembered (and even if he had, he wouldn’t have done this for her). Ted tells her she doesn’t need Sam to do everything for her: She can put up her own damn fairy lights if she wants to. It’s her house too. She can be happy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am happy,” she tells him. It’s a lie and they both know it (or at least Ted tells himself they both know it’s a lie, because that’s a whole lot less sad than Charlotte still believing herself when she says shit like this and Ted doesn’t actually want to think about that, fuck). “I just don’t think Sam would like it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck Sam!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s not a very nice thing to say, Ted.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ted just shrugs. He doesn’t care about being nice when it comes to Sam (and honestly, Charlotte shouldn’t either because Sam sure doesn’t care about being nice to her). “It’s your place too, Charlotte. If it’s true what you’re saying and he’s really not all that bad, you should be able to hang up the fucking lights without being scared to do so.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not scared, I’m just…” Her voice trails off and before he knows it, her head is buried in his chest. He closes his arms around her and presses a kiss on the top of her head. “I just don’t know what he’ll do. And if I don’t do anything wrong, nothing bad will happen.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know I’ll kill him if he hurts you, right?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s not just a comment about now, about this, about fucking fairy lights. And Ted knows that Sam’s hurting her, emotionally, every single day, because he knows Charlotte. He listens to Charlotte. He loves Charlotte. And Sam doesn’t. It’s honestly hard enough for him not to go confront him when he hears about the shit he does from day to day, but fuck, Ted doesn’t think there’s a reality where Sam physically hurts Charlotte, Ted finds out and Sam lives to see the next day (or maybe there is, but in that reality, Ted’s the one who doesn’t live to see the next day and in that case, it’s not really his problem anymore).</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Charlotte’s a listener, but she doesn’t listen when it comes to Sam. And Ted knows this, because he’s tried to make her listen many, many times. So instead of trying to explain to her exactly what he means, he just tells her that she heard what he said and she doesn’t disagree with him on that, because she knows it’s true and he does too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They don’t end up hooking up, but Charlotte asks him to stop by the Lakeside Mall on their way back to her place, so he does. He waits in the parking lot and when she returns, her hands are filled with packages upon packages of fairy lights. She lets him know that Sam won’t be home until late (which he already knows, that’s the whole reason they went to hook up in the first place, but whatever) and then she asks him to help hang up the fairy lights. And what’s he supposed to do, say no?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When they’re done, there’s sparkles in Charlotte’s ceiliing as well as her eyes and fuck, Ted doesn’t see her quite this happy often enough. It’s the most beautiful sight on the planet and he can’t help but to kiss her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Luckily, she kisses him back and hey, they end up fucking anyway, so Ted doesn’t even have anything to pretend to complain about when he drives home with the biggest fucking smile on his face.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
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